the blog of yair horowitz

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Many people think of happiness as a state of being. Something to strive toward. For this post I want to frame happiness as something else. Think of happiness as the collection of experiences and feelings about which one can experience nostalgia. By viewing it through that lens and doing some brain-exercising, I think that the “state of being” aspect might just happen.

Nostalgia involves longing for and focusing on good things from the past. The “longing for” is not relevant for this discussion. The “focusing on” is very relevant. When you stop viewing happiness as a destination and instead conceptualize it as a manageable collection of specific things, you are handed a degree of control over it. That control rests in your ability to choose what to pay attention to, and in the knowledge that you can choose to focus on and even strengthen the building blocks of your personal well-being.

A Century-Old Mercury Mine I Found In The Desert

Like most things in life, happiness is not binary. The present is not always joyous. It is not always melancholy either. And that’s okay. It’s life. It’s beautiful. It’s a blend. Being realistic about the nature of living frees us from the shackles of a binary view of happiness. Seeing shades of grey opens doors. Let’s explore what’s behind one of them.

Chances are that at this very moment you are experiencing a wide variety of emotions, sensations, and even day-dreams. That recognition gives you a neat opportunity: You can choose to make happiness a focus of your attention. Forcing it is okay, and can even work. Here are some ideas: Listen to a song which makes you smile. Sit down with a fruit and enjoy it with no distractions. Color on a piece of paper and admire the appearance of ink, then ponder what it took to get the marker from a manufacturing plant and into your hands.

If you know specific, simple, and reliable things which make you happy, you are equipped with the tools to improve your overall well-being.

Neat Stuff I Found In The Desert (Unrelated, Mostly)

Let’s formalize that happiness-choice we just talked about: Set aside a short period of time every day to create, package, and revisit memories of happy experiences. If my experience holds true for you, in less than a week the effects of those few minutes of focusing on happiness will spill over into the rest of your day without any additional effort.

This idea is open to nearly everyone. The only things which would get in the way are anhedonia and certain serious mental illnesses. My pay-grade doesn’t go there.

I do have one caution, however, and that is against the intentional pursuit of extreme joys.

We are mindful beings who inhabit piles of mush called homo sapiens. That latin blob has – over many millennia – evolved some once-helpful drives which are maladaptive in our plentiful 21st century. They revolve around our brain rewarding massive joys from unnatural things such as extremely calorie-dense foods, unhealthy drugs, unhealthy sex, and unhealthy gambling.

I am, of course, begging the question with the word unhealthy. At what point do healthy things become unhealthy? At the point where – as a result – simple and reliable joys are no longer pursued and no longer found to be rewarding. Ourbrain rewards extreme pleasure so well that it can permit us to lose our pursuit and enjoyment of the smaller and more consistent pleasures in life. Sunsets. Fluffy animals. Making art. Looking at art. Friendships. Immersion in a book. Seem like good things to me.

I Make Colorful Things Happen

You can be happy regardless of your life circumstance. Happiness is not a destination, it’s the result of observing and savoring small, sometimes fleeting bits of awesome and wonderful things along life’s journey.It can be developed.

Set aside a few minutes daily to do nothing but immerse your senses in one or two simple, reliable, accessible, and healthy joys. Savor the experience you create, paying attention to your senses and emotions. Bottle up that collection of wonderful so you can revisit it in your mind, and take nostalgia for a spin next time you are in an elevator or a long grocery store checkout line.

Life is a very long and generally fun learning experience. Some of life’s important lessons, however, aren’t fun to learn. Many of the topics which I know a lot about came into my awareness because of circumstances out of my control. For example, last winter I learned a lot about the intricacies of first-party insurance claims, and along with that came a boatload of knowledge regarding a specific type of heavy duty vehicle suspension. My idea of a fun winter wasn’t learning about contracts of adhesion and automotive welding, but life dished and I dealt.

More recently, life taught me some hard lessons about people. In the process I learned a lot about myself. I had been in a really difficult situation and it was only getting worse. I took some necessary distance from it, which allowed me the perspective I needed to realize how bad it actually was. I got help and I got out. I worked hard. It wasn’t fun. It hurt. Right now though, I am stronger than I have been at any point in the last two years. Not only that, but I have a new passion: mental health awareness and advocacy.

I want to share with you some of what I discovered. I want to do that because it has helped me grow as a person and I think that it can help anyone who is willing to put in the work. There is no reason why anyone should have to go through what I did in order to reap the rewards.

Learning can be wonderfully fun – particularly when it occurs on your own terms. I am enjoying the journey of discovery and understanding that I am currently on. My thoughts are not set in stone. As you read my upcoming posts, please feel free to share your stories and thoughts. Also, I want you to tell me when you think that I am wrong – as well as why. I am open to change.

With that said, I invite you to come along with me as I explore a variety of topics about the human experience, with a general focus on how to be a good person and how to live a good life. The subject is very broad, and I am excited to write about it.

Note: I will be writing about some pretty heavy topics and experiences. They include abuse, mental illness, sexuality, and suicide. If you want to keep your head in the sand about those things, I suggest that you stop reading a few posts after this one. Be further warned, however, that keeping your head in the sand is a surefire way to get shafted in life.

I recently made a huge mistake: I sympathized with someone who was close to me and validated their position as a victim, where in reality they were a victim of themselves. I didn’t know. I wish I could take it all back and replace it with tough love, even if it would have meant being pushed away sooner.

In the span of one minute on Facebook today I saw two posts from people who I know, who I like, writing explicitly about numbing their feelings with drugs. One post essentially said that the world can expect to see them again in four years. What I am writing here is for everyone, but it’s mostly for you two and for people in similar situations.

You are not a victim – certainly not of the election, and not right now. You are ANGRY, though. And you are using the election as your excuse for whatever is holding you back. You have done that with other things. You are misdirecting your emotions.

Here’s the bottom line: Everything that happens to you is your responsibility. It may not be your fault, but it is your responsibility. No one cares about you as much as you do. No one has to deal with your shit, whether you did it or it was done to you. Stop blaming others, especially preemptively, for the upcoming four years of your life which have yet to happen. Deal with your situation. So what if it’s someone else’s fault? It’s your problem now. Fix it.

You will need to make allowances for others being selfish, greedy, lazy, everything that some people are – that’s your responsibility too. Make those allowances for yourself, especially if you are far from your goals. Some of you are beating yourselves up silently on the inside. It is impossible to be a decent human being to others when you don’t do the same for yourself. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s true.

You have some poor coping strategies and bad habits. Everyone does. All of these are learned, which means that they can be unlearned. You may be in a really nasty mental cycle filled with self-hatred and shame. Somewhere in that mess of a mind, you know that things could be better. That you could be better. But you don’t know the way, so you revert to what you do know. Then you feel ashamed, and then cycle through your old bad habits to cope again.

Everything that happens to you is your responsibility. Not your fault, but your responsibility. That doesn’t mean that you have to deal with things alone. When you are in deep shit it is also your responsibility to ask for help. I am glad that you are angry. Anger is a fantastic tool to gain higher self-awareness. It can be very productive. Use it wisely. Exercise compassion and patience with yourself. Please, be kind to yourself.

And then take a bold step forward. You live once. Make it worthwhile.

(More to come. This has prompted me to resurrect my blog, because there is a lot more to write about this and it is important. It has nothing to do with the election. I hope that you read it.)

I have more than three years of fulltime RVing experience and have spent nearly every one of those 1000+ days off-grid. Solar provided my electricity and a water fill-up / dump station stop every couple of weeks covered my holding tanks. Conservation was the name of the game and it wasn’t burdensome.

For the past few weeks in Minturn the Forest Service has provided me a full-hookup RV site, effectively eliminating all of the “I can run out of X” elements in my house. The electrons flow from a monster 30-amp outlet and water enters from a spigot, draining directly to the city sewer system.

My USFS Volunteer Position Takes Me Places Like This

Two weeks ago I installed the capstone of this full-hookup experience: an electrical heating element for my water heater, which had previously only run on propane and was used sparingly. Who would have thought that the “hot” faucet in my sinks and shower would always do something substantially different from the “cold” faucet? Long showers are happening, people. Long showers in an RV. I can’t run out of water. I can’t fill up my tanks. I’m not even in a campground. It feels so wrong.

Who would have thought that an RV could be so similar to a non-motorized house? Amusingly, the answer is “most RV-ers.” Boondocking is not the norm. Most RVers drive their roving homes to RV parks and immediately connect to the grid, content to pay cash money for 15 feet of space between themselves and their neighbor.

My Office On Weekends

Now, is this on-griddedness something that I would pay for? Probably not. But for free while volunteering for the Forest Service – I’ll take it and enjoy every ounce of piping hot water. One day this past week I even took two showers. I planted myself a flower garden. I have a permanent-looking patio setup, a silly little storage shed, and drive a badass government truck all over the forest. It’s good stuff, folks. For now.

Scene #2, Albuquerque BioPark. I hear a woman excitedly say to the child in her stroller “Whatcha doin, monkey?!” I then walk by the front of the stroller and the kid smiles at me.

Kid: “Hi!”

Me: “Hey, Monkey!”

Kid (looking AMAZED): “How do you know my name?!”

Me: “We are at a zoo… and I just guessed.” (Woman bursts out laughing, kid is unexpectedly satisfied by my answer.)

Bonsai exhibit at Albuquerque BioPark

Scene #3, Capitol Reef National Park. Kid rushes over and tells me that his dad is “38 plus 2 years old” and tells me the name of the street in Wyoming where he lives. He immediately gets distracted but comes over again later and introduces himself as Uinta, clearly having forgotten that we had already met.

About a week ago a friend of mine (in person) casually asked “So, you spend a lot of time by yourself?” I caught myself laughing, because I really thought that the answer was “Not so much” but an instant later – after the thinking part of my brain kicked in – I realized that duh, I do spend a lot of time by myself.

In some sense that answers the question of whether I feel lonely on the road solo. I don’t. There are occasions when I miss specific people or want to be more social, but I realized early on that those occasions are simply signs that I should reach out to people I miss and strike a better balance between social time and solitude.

Solid solitude

The latter was a hard lesson that I quickly learned in early January, when after a week of isolation in Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge I felt lonely for the first time I remember. Ever. My brain juice is naturally configured in a lucky way such that I don’t typically experience strong negative emotions. That “feeling lonely” thing was a big deal. And I did something about it.

Aside from the obvious “do a better job of balancing social time with solitude” I recognized that there was something additional I craved: being around people who inspire me and who I inspire, in the realms of things I care about.

I love to juggle. I’m really good at it. I can be incredibly social, but unless I’m in a big city it’s unlikely that I’ll find quality jugglers around. Same goes for a particularly free-spirited Burner-esque dancer type. They’re around, but only a handful of cities have flourishing alternative scenes.

Saguaro Man, aerial photo credit Keith Allen

The solution I came up with was to teach at juggling festivals and attend regional Burning Man events, with approximately one such event scheduled each month. So far that has been wonderfully successful. It has led to an unusual fixedness in my nomadic route over the coming months, but it has also delivered a gift of deep connections with like-minded and inspiring people. Since that few-day blip in January I’ve been back on the emotionally even-keeled course that I’m used to, and my plan is working well.

Apparently I’m some weird combination of Desert Solitaire and a festival-goer. And I like it.

No, “solar overkill” isn’t a new form is broiling. It simply refers to the lovely fact that – particularly because I’m now RVing solo – the sun provides way more electricity than I need. Harsh LED lights? Outta’ here. Keeping my WiFi on 24/7? Hell yeah. Running a 250 watt sound system for casual listening? Sure thing – and with juice to spare.

I recently spent wonderfully fun, long weekends at a juggling festival and at a build/work weekend for Saguaro Man. I had a joyful time at each and they were both off-grid, meaning there were plenty of campers with cell phones and cameras in desperate search of non-existent 120-volt outlets.

My solar array is long-since installed. My hefty battery bank holds down the electronic fort and even on partially cloudy days I have more electricity than I know what to do with. So of course I offer my overflowing cup of joules to anyone who might need them. I had charging stations set up at the juggling festival and at Saguaro Man work weekend, and the fun/funny thing to me is how appreciative people were of my giving away sun-juice. If I wasn’t charging peoples’ stuff that energy would have literally been dissipated as heat. It cost me exactly zero marginal dollars to have a power strip available for public chargification, yet I received thanks as though I was giving away cash. Same deal with the WiFi network which I made public. Zero cost for me to share, but thankfulness up the LTE-wazoo.

Anyway, you’re welcome people. But I think it’s kind of funny to be profusely thanked for giving away a practically unlimited resource.

It sometimes takes interacting with friends in mainstream society to remind me of the degree to which I am disconnected from it. Related, I have grown to love sharing a taste of my unusual life with friends. When I host guests I present my patterns, thoughts, and enjoyments to them, essentially saying “Check it out and try it on if you want. This is me.”

It seems like this approach has been successful, both as a way to connect deeply and to provide guests with a fun time. Sure, we can do some touristy things, but let’s focus on knowing each other’s experience.

I am writing from Valley of Fire State Park in southern Nevada, in the company of a close friend of mine from college. It seems like he may be catching the RV bug. There’s always room for a topologist on the road.

Condensing a couple of weeks in Southern California into a few short sentences, my time there was well-spent. I visited old friends, made new ones, and confirmed that big cities are not for me.

My last hurrah in Los Angeles was a hangout with buddy and fellow full-timer Glenn, after which we both declared our nomadic wimpdom and bolted from the 80-degree mercury for two different sets of mountains. I ended up at 6000′ in San Bernardino National Forest down the road from a spectacular lake, enjoying nature’s free air conditioning and hiking up to the snow at Mount San Gorgonio.

Equipped with a solid 375 AH battery bank I was able to use my projector and speakers sans generator, and the whole forest experience was a win. Cruising on from San Bernardino I spent a few days climbing and juggling in Joshua Tree National Park, eventually moving on to the Nevada shore of Lake Mohave where I’m bowing before the magic contained within my new cellular booster. (I plug the booster in and “Searching…” turns into two bars of lightning-fast 4G.)

My neighbor here is an Alaskan who is building a houseboat, and he has countless stories of sheep-hunting on glaciers which would remain spectacular even if only 10% true.

This campsite is free, the weather is perfect, the lake is shimmering, the ducks are acting stupid, and I’m listening to Ravel. Anyone who thinks I’m crazy for living this life – I’m sorry to say but you’ve got it backwards.

1. Birding is oddly similar to geocaching. You kind of know where to look and are never really sure if the thing you’re looking for is there until you find it.

2. Because I have an old copy of the Peterson guide and am rarely in a rush, people often assume that I know what I’m doing. I don’t. I relyon the book so as to not identify half of the things I see as “a bird… the flying kind.”